I have never really used Friendfeed in any really engaging way. The conversational aspects of the service is fantastic, but I haven’t really been able to unlock the full potential of it. Until now I have been using Friendfeed mostly as an aggregator for my own content, only to redistribute it using the Facebook widget and the ‘post to twitter’ option. I also used it to remind myself which social networks I’m signed up to, Friendfeed gives me a nice list.

I really like the potential of Friendfeed, and I want to get a few more subscribers than the 11 I have got now . here are a few of the things I’m going to try to change that.

• Use Friendfeed to post status updates.
  I will start posting status updates to Friendfeed and cc twitter. This will show my subscribers that I’m actually using Friendfeed and not just aggregating. The problem with people that only aggregate, is that they probably won’t see the comments you make on their entries. By posting actively to Friendfeed I can show that Iactually spend time there. The other upside is that all my short URLs on twitter will be ff.im/xxxxxx, people on twitter using Friendfeed can see that I’m on Friendfeed and maybe they’ll subscribe (I know it’s a long shot but anyway).
  Update: I have my twitter settings set to ‘Link to source site instead of FriendFeed conversation’, deselect that, and your twitter links go directly to your Friendfeed entry instead of the link source. It publicises your Friendfeed account more, but it also requires one more click on your users’ part. Scobleizer and Thomas Hawk use this so it can’t be that bad, considering they are some of the biggest Friendfeed users. – Maybe I should try it?
• Join rooms and, most importantly, contribute.
  Contribute to the community! Friendfeed supports ‘groups’ as they call them. Everyone can create their own room and invite others to post to them, this gives a space for a community to have a specialised discussion. A little like you know it from forums and discussion boards. Posting to these rooms should get my name out there to the Friendfeed community and hopefully a few people will notice and follow me.
• Use the Friendfeed bookmarklet
  The Friendfeed browser bookmarklet is actually quite handy. It works almost like the Shareaholic Firefox add-on . You can share anything on Friendfeed by the click of button. It’s an extremely easy way to post interesting links, and if you use the post to twitter option your links will go straight to your twitter stream. No more copy pasting into Tweetdeck or various URL shortening services.
• Discuss on Friendfeed, not twitter.
  I will start engaging more in the discussions that are happening on Friendfeed. It’s super easy to follow discussions on Friendfeed, they are all grouped together around the original post, like a blog post.
• Using saved searches (filters).
  This saved searches are really filters, bu t I guess saved searches make more sense to the average user. These let’s me filter for keywords, like count and comments count. Great feature if you want to cut down on all the noise and discover the most important discussions. Let’s say you are into formula 1, you can filter all entries with 1 or more like which have at least 5 comments, – powerful feature .
• Like more.
  It’s no secret that I have had doubts about what the like feature on Friendfeed and Facebook was good for. But with the saved searches function it really makes sense, it’s like a voting system where you can filter out the best entries. Whenever you like an entry, a little link to you Friendfeed profile is displayedjust underneath the entry saying ‘kasperbs liked this’.

It might sound like I’m all interested in the number of followers or subscribers. And I’m am, to a certain extend. For a service like Friendfeed to be more useful to me, I think you need to build a following just like you do on twitter. These services are great for instant discussion, but it doesn’t make sense if you are only talking to yourself. – That is why I still have the ‘post to twitter’ option turned on so all my updates will go to twitter, where most of the people who care, spend their time.

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